In an effort to express the accomplishments of Microsoft in understandable terms, Bill Gates made the following comparison with General Motors products:

He said, " If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000 miles/hour(160,000 km/hr). Or

You could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds (14 kilos) and gets a thousand miles to the gallon of gas. In either case, the sticker of the new car would be less than $50.00. "

--- End of statement.

GM responded by pointing out that, if GM built cars that operated like Microsoft products:

You’d have a car that crashes 4 times a day.

Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you’d have to buy a new car.

Your car would constantly die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this as a normal part of operations and drive on.

Your car would also stop and fail to restart, and you’d have to reinstall the engine.

For some strange reason, you’d just accept this, too.

You could only have one person in the car at a time unless you bought a Car95 or a CarNT. But then you’d have to buy more seats. (Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as fast, twice as easy to drive-but would only run on 5 percent of the roads. Macintosh car owners could get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.)

To continue, the oil, engine, gas, and alternator warning lights would all be combined into a single " General Auto Protection Fault " warning light that, when lit, would oblige you to stop your car in the middle of the highway and restart it.

New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

If you were involved in a crash, you would never be able to determine the real cause of the crash.

Finally, the airbag system would ask you to press an " Are you sure? " button before deploying.